With same effort, farmers

Earn extra, from dairying

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol (PIA)—At the average of 4 liters of raw milk per head a day, a Boholano dairy farmer with just two heads of milking carabao will have an additional P500 per day of income with hardly any more effort than his usual day to day pasturing or feeding the draft animal.

Multiply that to 30 days, that is an additional P15,000 a month or extra money for the family’s needs.

That too means an annual income of P120,000, considering that a milking carabao weans after about nine to ten months, explains Romulo Garcia, Bohol Capitol’s Dairy Program Coordinator at the Office of the Provincial Veterinarian.

And that 120,000 is just the milking profit, not counting the calves, which when sold, can go as much as P12,000 to P18,000 and could even go higher with the breed and its purpose.

A healthy calf prepared for draft work can fetch a higher price, he added.

At the recent 10th Bohol Dairy Festival, the story is being told and retold by dairy farmers who in the last decade or less, have seen the hidden income of dairy farming and the huge help it plays in the government nutrition programs.

Republic Act 11034 enacted in June 2018 institutionalized the National Feeding program for undernourished children in public day care, kindergarten, and elementary schools to combat hunger and undernutrition among Filipino Children.

Also known as "Masustansyang Pagkam para sa Batang Filipino Act," the law says national government agencies need to coordinate with the Department of Agriculture (DA), the National Dairy Authority (NDA), the Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) and the Cooperative Development Authority for the incorporation of fresh milk and fresh milk-based food products in the fortified meals and cycle menu in accordance with Republic Act No. 8172, otherwise known as the "Philippine Food Fortification Act of 2000."

The law also mandates the use of locally produced milk to enhance nutritional content and, at the same time, help boost livelihood opportunities for local dairy farmers and the local dairy industry.

With this, the PCC and NDA have assured their dairy farmers of a ready market for raw milk, which is unlike other crops where the farmers are left to their means of marketing the produce.

And while milk easily stales, trainings on backyard milk processing especially in matters of food safety have been conducted to some 600 farmer adoptor families and construction of milk parlors have been supervised by these agencies, keeping in mind food handling and food safety, according to Garcia who was at Kapihan sa PIA.

Every day, raw milk collection teams round up the milk and bring them to processing centers for pasteurization, where milk is put in a heat-treatment process to destroying harmful disease-causing microorganisms while preserving most of the milk’s nutritional qualities.

This is important as the milk used in government feeding programs, because raw milk can contain pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.

The Department of Education (DepED) paid to Bohol Dairy Cooperative (BODACO) some P25,753,035 for its School-based Milk Feeding Program for severely wasted, stunted and severely stunted kindergarten in 2025, where 22,297 Boholano undernourished kids benefited.

On the other hand, the Department of Social Welfare and Development Milk Feeding Program, which runs for 120 to 180 days and is intended for 2 to 5 years old kids, spent P22,259,640 by feeding 9,655 kids in 2024 and some P14,417,040 for 5,461 kids in 2025, according to the OPV.

Bohol provincial government under Governor Erico Aristotle Aumentado has also put in P10 million annually to back its Provincial Nutrition Program, which is also mandated by RA 11034.

This has also motivated farmers to adopt dairying, considering that without breaking their usual daily care of their large ruminants, an additional income gets in, and Aumentado hopes this would dent much on Bohol’s poverty alleviation programs. (PIAbohol)

THE SAME WORK. For essentially the same work and without any extra effort, Boholano farmers are now seeing that their livestock can be a viable source of additional income, even without any added effort. Pasturing and bringing the large ruminants to shade are daily tasks, but with the opportunity for dairy, an added income come in, and a calf too, marks the profit, explains Romulo Garcia, Bohol dairy Program officer at the OPVet said, (PIAbohol)